Bob Hoying says jitters he felt in his first year as Ohio State's starting quarterback are gone.
Hoying said he was eager to be resuming practice for Thursday's Holiday Bowl against Brigham Young, particularly after the devastation of a 28-0 defeat against Michigan in the regular-season finale, followed by the death of teammate Jayson Gwinn in a Dec. 12 auto accident."Just being away from it for those weeks after the loss to Michigan and then getting back into bowl practice, I don't know if you're calmer, but you just feel better about everything, more confident, more sure about yourself," the sophomore quarterback said Thursday.
Hoying completed 104 of 191 pass attempts for 1,515 yards and eight touchdowns and was intercepted eight times this season. He was at quarterback for a majority of the Buckeyes' plays, but senior Bret Powers saw a good bit of action as a backup.
Hoying said he knew things would not be easy as a first-year starter and acknowledged having rocky moments during a 9-1-1 season in which the Buckeyes finished as Big Ten Conference co-champions.
"I might have a real good two or three quarters and then a couple or three bad plays would screw it up.
"But that's going to happen, and hopefully I'm a better quarterback for it. I don't feel like I'm a first-year quarterback any more. I feel more experienced, and hopefully you'll see that in the bowl game," he said.
Ohio State quarterbacks coach Ron Hudson said the change in Hoying was obvious to him.
"There is no question he is better than he was at the beginning of the year and it's because of his better understanding of the game, understanding what we want to get accomplished, which only comes through experience," Hudson said.
"Obviously, he threw some interceptions this year that we wouldn't particularly like to boast about, but if we can nullify those, I think we're going to have a fine player at quarterback."
Asked why the Buckeyes went with a two-quarterback system, especially in the victory against Michigan State and tie with Wisconsin, Hudson said, "I thought Bobby probably would come out and do some good things initially, which he did, and then a couple of times in crucial situations he didn't execute well and that's why with the combination of Bret doing well, we came with Bret.
"But yeah, Bobby lived up to what I thought he would do. And if we could cut out about three of those interceptions, then we're talking about a real quality player."